Unter verschiedenen Projekten, mit denen ich mich in den letzten Jahren nicht beschäftigen konnte, weil der deutsche Mob mich entrechtet und entmündigt hat, möchte ich mein Projekt zur Entwicklung neuartiger Konzepte des Wohnens vorstellen.

This article articulates our everyday notion of cooperation. First, I topple an orthodoxy of shared agency theory by arguing that shared intentions to J are neither necessary nor sufficient for J to be cooperative. I refute the necessity claim by providing examples of shared intention-free cooperation (in institutional contexts and beyond). I refute the sufficiency claim by observing that coercion and exploitation need not preclude shared intentions but do preclude cooperation. These arguments, in turn, lead to my positive proposal. People (...) cooperate, I argue, just in case their activities are coordinated in ways that do not undermine any participant’s agency. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to analyse compactness properties of nonmonotonic inference operations within the framework of model theory. For this purpose the concepts of a deductive frame and its semantical counterpart, a semantical frame are introduced. Compactness properties play a fundamental in the study of non-monotonic inference, and in the paper several new versions of compactness are studied.

What is involved in acting together with others? Most shared agency theorists endorse the Shared Intention Thesis, i.e., the claim that shared agency necessarily involves shared intentions. This article dissents from this orthodoxy and offers a minimalist account of shared agency—one where parties to shared activities need not form rich webs of interrelated psychological states. My account has two main components: a conceptual analysis of shared agency in terms of the notion of plan, and an explanation of undertheorized agency‐sharing mechanisms. (...) My analysis states that we act together just in case our activities conform to a plan and that plan figures in an explanation of our activities’ joint conformity to it. To sloganize:shared activity is plan‐coordinated activity. Sometimes, plan‐coordination goes by way of shared intentions. However, besides shared intentions, there are at least two additional families of agency‐sharing mechanisms. The first features a central planner who determines the content of a plan and attributes the different parts of that plan to a collection of agents. The second does away with the planner and involves a roughly Darwinian selection of patterns of activity. Both families of mechanisms enable us to act together even in the absence of shared intentions. (shrink)

This book, through extensive textual study, explores the Buddha's and Buddhism's uncompromising and unflinching emphasis on the centrality of ethics as against any pernicious dogmas and metaphysical beliefs, and their attempts to causally relate moral perfection to soteriological or eschatological goal. What is most admirable about Buddhism is that it integrates the vertical development of human consciousness, for which the other is the necessary condition, with the gradual development of morality. It was this emphasis which separated Siddhartha, before he attained (...) the Awakened Wisdom (bodhi), from his teachers - Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta - and it is for this reason that the Buddha calls himself and his Dhamma Patisotagami, i.e. going against the currents of the prevailing dogmas and pernicious beliefs. In brief, Buddhism is about overcoming of suffering, the greatest evil, through ethicization of human consciousness and conduct, which also takes care of the ethicization of the society and the universe. Besides, some of the essays of this book explore many other themes like Buddhist epistemology, nature of self, time, and intercultural. (shrink)

Cognitive architectures, like programming languages, make commitments only at the implementation level and have limited explanatory power. Their universality implies that it is hard, if not impossible, to justify them in detail from finite quantities of data. It is more fruitful to focus on particular tasks such as language understanding and propose testable theories at the computational and algorithmic levels.

This article presents material from my ethnographic study in Śringēri, south India, the site of a powerful 1200yearold Advaitic monastery that has been historically an interpreter of ancient Hindu moral treatises. A vibrant diverse local culture that provides plural sources of moral authority makes Sringeri a rich site for studying moral discourse. Through a study of two conversational narratives, this essay illustrates how the moral self is not an ossified product of written texts and codes, but is dynamic, gen dered, (...) and emergent, endowed with historical and political agency and an aesthetic capacity that mediates many normative sources to articulate "appropriate" conduct. In so doing, the essay shows the value of including oral narrative in ethical inquiry, especially in narrative ethics, which, for most part, has focused on written sources. (shrink)

Man is endowed with brain and mind for comprehending reality of the world. Brain is material entity and is observable, while mind is a non-physical conceived entity. Scientific investigations enhance our knowledge of the functioning of brain and its constituents. They indicate mind-brain association but do not rule out the possibility, in which mind is a property of brain. The perceived reality of the world has both objective and subjective components. The objective components are attributed to brain either alone or (...) in association with mind. The subjective components are considered to be the creations of mind but they appear to contain grains of reality. Attempts made to separate these grains have succeeded partially. One hopes for complete success only after the incorporation of a few missing ingredients. It is our contention that the missing ingredients are human being as an entangled quantum entity - photon field, quantum entity's capability to read information from photon fields of other humans and from its own field reflected by the environment. The evidence for the first ingredient is provided by the analysis of spontaneously emitted visible range photon signals by human beings. The other two ingredients put usual charge- photon interaction in proper context. The experimental results relevant to mind- brain interface are briefly described. A few minutes' time series of small portion of these signals determines their nine properties, which establish quantum nature of signal, and specify quantum state of the dominant component to be squeezed state. Six properties differ in signals emitted at 12 anatomical sites of the same person. Profile of a property for a person is the set of its values at 12 sites. Profile is very informative and can discriminate persons with differing holistic features. Cluster analysis offers procedures for measuring qualitative holistic features e.g. procedure for measuring ‘meditativeness' of a person. The incorporation of other two ingredients chalks out a route for answering the question who we are? (shrink)

Vedānta endeavours to base itself essentially on the facts of experience—in the fullest sense of the term. It recognizes the occurrence of everyday experience and the so-called fact of evil, but it refuses to view them as real. The real, it says, like Hegel, does not exist, and that which exists is not real. Evil is only an “existent"—as all this Samsara is—but not the ultimate Real. But it will be at once objected that if evil is an appearance, a (...) Maya, why should this appearance appear at all? If it has no foundation in reality, how and why does it occur at all? Further, how can anything be known as real unless it should appear ? Reality must appear. (shrink)

Unlike other ways of coming to act, for example as a result of habit or impulse, practical reasoning imprints our actions with the distinctive mark of rational full-blooded agency. This entry enquires into what practical reasoning consists in. First, we lay out four basic criteria—mentality, evaluation, practicality, attributability—that adequate accounts of practical reasoning ought to satisfy in order to capture essential features of the phenomenon. Specifically, practical deliberation is a by and large conscious mental process answerable to a range of (...) evaluative standards. Moreover, this process is aimed at settling what to do. Lastly, reasoning does not merely occur to the practical reasoner but is instead something that they do. -/- We then turn to John Broome’s influential account of reasoning which satisfies the aforementioned criteria. On his view, practical reasoning is the rule-guided activity by which we bring our mental attitudes (especially our intentions) to satisfy requirements of practical rationality. We then focus on three challenges to Broome’s account that have been the topic of recent debate. First, we discuss the role that autobiographical considerations of the sort ‘I’d like to φ’, or ‘I intend to φ’ might play in practical reasoning. Broome, perhaps, is wrong in giving them very little place. Second, we discuss Jonathan Dancy’s proposal that practical reasoning does not conclude in the formation of intentions but in action. Third, we consider whether assessments of rationality can come in degrees and why we should care about satisfying rational requirements in the first place. (shrink)

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad offers illuminating new perspectives on contemporary phenomenological theories of body and subjectivity, based on studies of diverse classical Indian texts. He argues for a 'phenomenological ecology' of bodily subjectivity in health, gender, contemplation, and lovemaking.

This article underscores the need for entrepreneurship research in extreme contexts to conceptualize the idiosyncrasies of the geopolitical dynamics under which entrepreneurs operate, and to consider the ethical implications emanating thereof. Undertaking such a task will illuminate the contextual challenges that local entrepreneurs must routinely placate, or otherwise navigate, to survive. Drawing on rich qualitative data from the Occupied Palestinian Territory of the West Bank, this paper demonstrates one avenue by which to capture the nuances of an extreme context in (...) relation to its effects on the entrepreneurial process. Specifically, it shows how data collected at myriad institutional sites—from actors that are not only directly, but also tangentially, connected to entrepreneurship in the local market—can effectively unveil the vicissitudes of the extreme context. This article further contends that a comprehensive and a holistic understanding of the extreme context will move toward revealing the nature of political embeddedness of entrepreneurs in their institutionally unstable environment—a concern that is especially conspicuous in geopolitical areas that would qualify as being extreme. (shrink)

Drawing on a rich variety of Indian texts across multiple traditions, including Vedanta, Buddhist, Yoga and Jain, this collection explores how emotional experience is framed, evoked and theorized in order to offer compelling insights into human subjectivity. Rather than approaching emotion through the prism of Western theory, a team of leading Indian philosophers showcase the unique literary texture, philosophical reflections and theoretical paradigms that classical Indian sources provide in their own right. From solitude in the Saundarananda and psychosomatic theories of (...) disease in the Yogavasistha to female lament in Greek, Sinhala Buddhist and Sanskrit epic tales, their chapters reveal the range and diversity of the phenomena encompassing the English term 'emotion'. In doing so, they contribute towards a more cosmopolitan, comparative and pluralistic conception of human experience. Adopting a broad phenomenological methodology, this handbook reframes debates on emotion within classical Indian thought and is an invaluable resource for researchers and students seeking to understand the field beyond the Western tradition. (shrink)

Reading a passage in the Sanskrit Mahābhārata—the attempted disrobing of Princess Draupadī after her senior husband has gambled her away (after losing all his wealth, his brothers and himself)—I suggest that we see in her attitude and angry words an expression of contempt. I explore how contempt is a concept that is not thematized within Sanskrit aesthetics of emotions, but nonetheless is clearly articulated in the literature. Focusing on the significance of her gendered expression of anger and contempt, and the (...) positive acceptance of it in the text, I suggest that contempt can be understood as a transformative attitude in a woman (even a high-born one) towards iniquities in a patriarchal culture. (shrink)

Based on original translations of passages from the works of three major thinkers of the classical Indian school of Advaita (Sankara, Vacaspati and Sri Harsa), but addressing issues found in Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein and contemporary analytic philosophers, this book argues for a philosophical position it calls 'non-realism'. This is the view that an independent, external world must be assumed if the features of cognition are to be explained, but that it cannot be proved that there is such a (...) world, independently of an appeal to cognition itself. This position is constructed against idealist denials of externality, realist arguments for an independent world and the sceptical denial of the coherence of cognition. (shrink)

Thus one should define, in a double way, name and form in all phenomena of the three realms. …In this essay, we want to bring together two issues for their mutual illumination: the particular use of that hoary Indian dyad, "nāma-rūpa," literally, "name-and-form," by Buddhaghosa, the influential fifth-century Theravāda writer, to organize the categories of the abhidhamma, the canonical classification of phenomenal factors and their formulaic ordering;1 and an interpretation of phenomenology as a methodology. We argue that Buddhaghosa does not (...) use abhidhamma as a reductive ontological division of the human being into mind and body, but rather as the contemplative structuring of human phenomenology.... (shrink)

Every domain-specific ontology must use as a framework some upper-level ontology which describes the most general, domain-independent categories of reality. In the present paper we sketch a new type of upper-level ontology, which is intended to be the basis of a knowledge modelling language GOL (for: 'General Ontological Language'). It turns out that the upper- level ontology underlying standard modelling languages such as KIF, F-Logic and CycL is restricted to the ontology of sets. Set theory has considerable mathematical power and (...) great flexibility as a framework for modelling different sorts of structures. At the same time it has the disadvantage that sets are abstract entities (entities existing outside the realm of time, space and causality), and thus a set-theoretical framework should be supplemented by some other machinery if it is to support applications in the ripe, messy world of concrete objects. In the present paper we partition the entities of the real world into sets and urelements, and then we introduce several new ontological relations between these urelements. In contrast to standard modelling and representation formalisms, the concepts of GOL provide a machinery for representing and analysing such ontologically basic relations. (shrink)

The General Formal Ontology is a top-level ontology that is being developed at the University of Leipzig since 1999. Besides introducing some of the basic principles of the ontology, we expound axiomatic fragments of its formalization and present ontological models of several use cases. GFO is a top-level ontology that integrates objects and processes into a unified framework, in a way that differs significantly from other ontologies. Another unique selling feature of GFO is its meta-ontological architecture, which includes set theory (...) into ontology and which accounts for its specific role in common representation approaches. The second level of that architecture starts from the distinction of categories and individuals, which forms the backbone of the world’s structure. Furthermore, GFO comprises several kinds of categories, among them universals and concepts, and it considers several ontological regions and levels. In the context of this special issue paper, we study five pre-determined use cases from the perspective of GFO. The results of these analyses yield insights into how the ontology treats several important notions. Very abridged, this covers material objects and their composition; roles and social entities; properties with their relations to objects and processes, and their changing; changes of processes, including a functional perspective; and, eventually, the nature and changing of concepts as well as terminology. A final part summarizes application projects that use GFO in various contexts. (shrink)

Gender mainstreaming has been prioritised within the national agricultural policies of many countries, including Nepal. Yet gender mainstreaming at the national policy level does not always work to effect change when policies are implemented at the local scale. In less-developed nations such as Nepal, it is rare to find a critical analysis of the mainstreaming process and its successes or failures. This paper employs a critical gender analysis approach to examine the gender mainstreaming efforts in Nepal as they move from (...) agricultural policies to practices. The research involved a structured review of 10 key national agricultural policy documents, 14 key informant interviews, and two focus group discussions with female and male smallholder farmers. Results suggest that gender mainstreaming in national agricultural policy and practice has largely failed. The creation of the Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) section within the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development is paradoxical to gender-responsive agricultural innovation because it has received limited human and financial resources with an expectation for women to manage this policy development in informal and largely unrecognized ways. At the regional and local levels, implementation of fundamental gender equity and social inclusion procedures—such as gender-responsive planning and budgeting—has become staff responsibility without requisite formal training, gender sensitization, and follow-up. In Nepal, women as smallholder farmers or agricultural labourers are recognized as a vulnerable group in need of social protection, but the welfare approach to gender mainstreaming has achieved little in terms of gender equity, social inclusion, and agricultural sustainability. This paper concludes that what is generally missing is a systemic transformation of gender roles and relations in agriculture, with policies that would support rural women's empowerment through the provision of economic and political rights and entitlement to productive resources. (shrink)

Classical Indian schools of philosophy seek to attain a supreme end to existence--liberation from the cycle of lives. This book looks at four conceptions of liberation and the roles of analytic inquiry and philosophical knowledge in its attainment. The central motivation of Indian philosophy--the quest for the Highest Good--is situated in the analytic philosophical activity of key thinkers.

Organizations today recognize that it is not only important to engage in corporate social responsibility, but that it is also equally important to ensure that information about CSR is communicated to audiences. At times, however, the CSR image perceived by audiences is not an accurate portrayal of the organization’s CSR identity and is, therefore, incongruent with the desired CSR image. In this paper, we build upon the nascent work on organizational impression management by examining CSR communication from an impression management (...) perspective. The model developed here proposes that incongruence between desired and current CSR images motivates an organization to decrease the incongruence through CSR communication. This relationship is moderated by four factors: importance of CSR image to the organization; power, status, and attractiveness of the target audience; importance of CSR image to the target audience; and media attention and public scrutiny. The model also identifies four dimensions of CSR communication structure and includes a feedback loop through which audience interpretation of the CSR communication can influence the organization’s CSR image incongruence. Two illustrative examples are provided to indicate how the model may be applied to organizations. This paper has several implications for research and practice. It draws connections between impression management theory and CSR and adds to the emerging literature on organizational impression management. It can also help organizations decide on the appropriate CSR communication structure to use in specific situations and be more effective in their CSR communication. (shrink)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's drug advisory committees provide expert assessments of the safety and efficacy of new therapies considered for approval. A committee hears from a variety of speakers, from six groups, including voting members of the committee, FDA staff members, employees of the pharmaceutical company seeking approval of a therapy, patient and consumer representatives, expert speakers invited by the company, and public participants. The committees convene at the request of the FDA when the risks and harms of (...) novel products are not immediately clear, and their final decisions carry significant weight, as most therapies that receive advisory committee approval are subsequently approved by the FDA. In recent years, across a series of diverse publications, the financial conflicts of interest of each category of participants in the meetings have been investigated. Here, we summarize these findings and their ethical implications, focusing on the FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee, and we suggest ways to move toward more transparent and impartial advisory committee meetings. (shrink)

This paper deals with issues related to character building and human values, both in personal and work life. The focus of the author is value-centred management, which has been discussed along two aspects of the human self, that is, the micro self and macro self. Here, the author tries to highlight the importance of both 'selves' in the organizational context. In the concluding part of the paper the author presents the authenticity of Kautilya's views on the macro self in the (...) context of the present business scenario. The author attempts to portray the transition created by the market economy, which cannot provide an exclusively painless solution. Moreover, he advocates culturing of self-discipline in corporate life, which can bring about qualitative improvement, both in work and personal life. 'Work with integrity and serve with love' is the philosophy the author presents in this paper. (shrink)

Contemporary consciousness studies, where it is not explicitly religious, is mostly physicalist. Theories of self and consciousness in classical Hindu thought can easily be seen to contribute to religious issues in consciousness studies. But it is also the case that there is much in that that can be useful within broadly physicalist parameters of study as well. The Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya schools, while having (nonphysicalist) soteriological goals for the metaphysical self, nonetheless provide theories of its relationship with consciousness that allow (...) for interpretative strategies that can make their theories relevant to a broadly physicalist study of consciousness. Advaita Vedānta cannot be so interpreted, but its inquiry into the nature of consciousness can provide material for a fundamental critique of the project of objectifying consciousness. (shrink)

Every domain-specific ontology must use as a framework some upper-level ontology which describes the most general domain-independent categories of reality. In the present paper we sketch a new type of upper-level ontology, and we outline an associated knowledge modelling language called GOL – for: General Ontological Language. It turns out that the upper-level ontology underlying well-known standard modelling languages such as KIF, F-Logic and CycL is restricted to the ontology of sets. In a set theory which allows Urelements, however, there (...) will be ontological relations between these Urelements which the set-theoretic machinery cannot capture. In contrast to standard modelling and representation formalisms, GOL provides a machinery for representing and analysing such ontologically basic relations. GOL is thus a genuine extension of KIF and of similar languages. In GOL entities are divided into sets and Urelements, the latter being divided in their turn into individuals and universals. Foremost among the individuals are things or substances, tropes or moments, and situoids: entities containing facts as components. (shrink)

In times of crises, public health leaders may claim that trials of public health interventions are unethical. One reason for this claim can be that equipoise—i.e. a situation of uncertainty and/or disagreement among experts about the evidence regarding an intervention—has been disturbed by a change of collective expert views. Some might claim that equipoise is disturbed if the majority of experts believe that emergency public health interventions are likely to be more beneficial than harmful. However, such beliefs are not always (...) justified: where high quality research has not been conducted, there is often considerable residual uncertainty about whether interventions offer net benefits. In this essay we argue that high-quality research, namely by means of well-designed randomized trials, is ethically obligatory before, during, and after implementing policies in public health emergencies (PHEs). We contend that this standard applies to both pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions, and we elaborate an account of equipoise that captures key features of debates in the recent pandemic. We build our case by analyzing research strategies employed during the COVID-19 pandemic regarding drugs, vaccines, and non-pharmaceutical interventions; and by providing responses to possible objections. Finally, we propose a public health policy reform: whenever a policy implemented during a PHE is not grounded in high-quality evidence that expected benefits outweigh harms, there should be a planned approach to generate high-quality evidence, with review of emerging data at preset time points. These preset timepoints guarantee that policymakers pause to review emerging evidence and consider ceasing ineffective or even harmful policies, thereby improving transparency and accountability, as well as permitting the redirection of resources to more effective or beneficial interventions. (shrink)

A case study in the kinds of problems to expect from this increasingly popular marketing tactic.

Most of the existing classification techniques concentrate on learning the datasets as a single similar unit, in spite of so many differentiating attributes and complexities involved. However, traditional classification techniques are required to analyze the datasets prior to learning, and if not doing so, they loss their performance in terms of accuracy and AUC. To this end, many of the machine learning problems can be very easily solved just by carefully observing human learning and training nature and then mimicking the (...) same in the machine learning. In response to these issues, we present a comprehensive suite of experiments carefully designed to provide conclusive, reliable, and significant results to the problem of efficient learning. This paper proposes a novel, simple, and effective machine learning paradigm that explicitly exploits this important similar-to-different (S2D) human learning strategy and implements it based on two algorithms (C4.5 and CART) efficiently. The framework not only analyzes the data sets prior to implementation, but also carefully allows classifier to have a systematic study so as to mimic the human training technique designed for efficient learning. Experimental results show that the method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in terms of learning capability and breaks through the gap between human and machine learning. In fact, the proposed similar-to-different (S2D) strategy may also be useful in efficient learning of real-world complex and high-dimensional data sets, especially which are very typical to learn with traditional classifiers. (shrink)